Moderation, Enjoyment of Life, Tranquility, Friendship, Lack of Fear

Guns and the Florida school massacre

At least the Florida legislature has bucked the NRA and introduced some safety improvements for guns. But have they banned AR-15 military-style, rapid fire assault guns? No!

According to local police, the perpetrator, Cruz, was armed with such an AR-15 rifle. These weapons fire bullets that can penetrate a steel helmet from a distance of five hundred yards. When fired from close range at civilians who aren’t wearing body armor, the bullets from an AR-15 don’t merely penetrate the human body—they tear it apart. It “looks like a grenade went off in there,” Peter Rhee, a trauma surgeon at the University of Arizona, told Wired. (part of an article by John Cassidy in the NewYorker magazine, February 15).

I was watching CNN immediately after the gun atrocity at the school in Florida. A member of the panel seriously suggested that all schools should have armed guards with loaded guns outside the premises. What have we come to? Shoot-out at O.K Corrall? There are sensible things Congress could do about guns that don’t involve confiscating everyone’s “sacred” firearms. Not selling automatic weapons designed for soldiers in wartime to disturbed 19 year olds is a start. But the panel member didn’t even begin to address what the majority of the US population want. The NRA and its shills simply don’t care, nor, apparently, do the Federal congressmen who take its sordid campaign money.

From my personal (and terrifying) experience, when a shooter starts shooting, the average trained armed guard, shocked and nervous, is unlikely to hit anything, except by accident. The people who seriously expect fire to be returned and the instigator instantly shot dead have been watching too many Wild West movies (which, by the way, have had a dire effect on generations of, mainly, men – the Sherriff unerringly gets the bad man, immediately and calmly. Real life is seldom like that!).